By Bob Diamond
It happened in Gustavia, St. Barths on our 2004 spring St. Martin flotilla cruise. Gustavia is the main harbor town in St. Barths, a small French Caribbean island that’s popular for many of the rich and famous; some with yachts. All three of our flotilla boats were anchored just outside the harbor. The anchorage is spread out with a hundred or so boats sheltering on the lee side of St. Barts. As it happened, the boats were anchored apart from each other but within easy dinghy distance to each other and to the inner harbor in the middle of town.
After spending the afternoon snorkeling at a nearby island my crew and I were just settling in for cocktail hour when an unfamiliar dinghy carrying a crew member from one of our other boats pulled up to our swim step.
“Hey, Bob!” Brian, from one of the other boats of our flotilla called out. “Our dinghy is missing.”
“Come aboard,” I responded to Brian, “Sit down, have a G & T with us and tell us what’s going on.” I had just served my crew the iced drinks and there was no need to break up the party right away.
It turned out Brian had tied up his boat’s dinghy at the dock near the harbor master’s office to run some kind of errand ashore and when he came back to the dinghy dock his dinghy was gone despite it being secured to the dock with a cable lock. In his obvious consternation a Good Samaritan offered him a ride and Brian figured he better come to my boat so I could help him.
We finished our drinks and hopped into my dinghy to go investigate and sure enough; his dinghy wasn’t at the dock. We then cruised my dinghy to see if perhaps someone had “borrowed” his and left it somewhere in the harbor. If it wasn’t in the harbor, it might be with a boat in the anchorage. It would take a while to check the whole anchorage, but it could be done. After checking out the inner harbor with no results, we stopped back at the dock to notify the harbormaster who was astonished that someone would have the gall to steal a dinghy tied up almost in front of his office.
After giving our report, Brian and I were getting ready to leave in my dinghy when another dinghy arrived with two guys in it. We didn’t pay much attention to them until they asked, “Are you looking for a dinghy?” It turned out they were in Brian’s having mistaken it for theirs. Having chartered from the same company as us it was easy to mistake Brian’s dinghy from theirs although the dinghies do come with numbers painted on them. In this case the numbers were like each other and coincidentally, the keys to the cable lock matched.
The two guys apologized profusely and recovered their own dinghy that was still tied up at the dock. After telling the harbormaster everything was okay, Brian took his dinghy back to his boat and I headed back to mine. A half hour later the other two guys showed up at Brian’s boat with a gift of two bottles of wine. That was nice compensation, but Brian resolved to tie a distinctive ribbon or something to the dinghy to keep it from being mistaken again.